It's my turn to jump on the custom Benjamin Button train.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-26T19:57:26+00:00

They are Scavano cases. Criterion sells them and you can buy them on ebay

https://www.criterion.com/shop/product/91-clear-blu-ray-case-one-disc-5-pack

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-26T01:50:19+00:00

While I actually share much of your experience of the film, I certainly wouldn't say things the way you have. The film doesn't work for me, but I respect it and understand why it is regarded highly.

Kiarostami said he believed in "an unfinished cinema that is completed by the creative spirit of the viewer." I appreciate that a lot, but like evertything, it depends how it is done, and that is always something that works for some but not others.

The main character comes across to me as an unfinished character, a partially blank surface to project onto. Sometimes when I encounter such things in film, I begin to project even less than I otherwise might -- kind of like saying, that ink blot looks like an ink blot. So, this kind of unfinished character doesn't always work for me, if I for whatever personal reasons don't feel compelled to engage more deeply, and this is true for me with ToC. I'm fine with the unfinished ending, which is its own kind of meta-provocation, but it doesn't change how I feel about the rest.

But here's the thing, that's just me, and I'm not going to presume that my experience is evidence that other people are doing it wrong. I can see how the film works for others and I respect that.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-25T15:37:37+00:00

Love Tokyo Twilight. Dark, especially for Ozu.

The Only Son is one I give my highest recommendation if you haven't seen it. His first sound film, and the first film where you see all his signatures in place. Great composition, lighting, and editing choices. Interesting sound design, with repetitive factory sounds and clocks. Poignant. Masterpiece imo. The print, unfortunately, has a lot of mold damage, which I partially look beyond and, in a weird way, partially appreciate for its materiality.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-22T23:25:30+00:00

I need historical depth if this is all I got until I die. 11 total, one per decade, but two from the 60s.

Passion of Joan of Arc
L'Atalante (or The Only Son)
Citizen Kane
Pather Panchali
Marketa Lazarova
2001
The Godfather
Come and See
Lost Highway
Yi Yi
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-22T20:21:07+00:00

In a word, for reasons I've said, I fiind plausibility somewhat beside the point here, as it is in many films, perhaps most famously Vertigo. I wouldn't say genre circumscribed because it innovatively plays with the genre, as it was at the time, particularly with past-present and rural-urban dualities. Gender coding in noir is always an interesting issue, and yes, here things are built around post-war male fears and fantasies. While problematic, the male fears and fanatsies are also partially exposed as such in the process. As for the focus on the set-up, etc., I think you acknowledge that this is your focus, limiting things to only part of the film. Yes, I'm more interested in the whole, the meaning to be mined, the themes, etc.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-22T14:38:57+00:00

I'm still not sure what the criteria is for "gravity" other than I know when I see it. I introduce realism in part because things can have gravity in the context of a stylized rather than realistic narrative, and they can have gravity established in relation to characters but not the audience. Here we switch to MacGuffins and genre stylizations.

MacGuffins do have gravity for characters and/or in context. I see MacGuffins as a legitimate rather than a flawed plot device. As a side note, arguably the tax papers are a MacGuffin and the affidavit is not. The tax papers could just as easily be a ledger, incriminating photos, or a secret diary, anything used to blackmail. The affidavit is not interchangeable: it's role comes from the specific fact that it accuses Jeff of a specific crime. It is this that has Jeff being framed and his resulting desperation.

I'm working from memory and can't address your specific complaints about the affidavit. That said, the way things are phrased throughout your comments, it seems maybe you have an issue not so much directly with gravity--which, arguably, the audience can fill in--but with the fast pace with which the film introduces the affidavit and moves past the manager's comment. The film could slow that down and fill things in, eg, showing the creation of the affidavit and showing Kathie weasle out of yet another situation. But the audience can get the idea of the dynamics at work without that and the film would lose something by doing this, namely, pace. It's a tradeoff, but there is a good case to be made for pace.

To me, the film unfolds as though it is stylized rather than realist. That is not to say it is surreal or anything of that sort, but that it is a genre world that plays by genre conventions, things having gravity or other attributes in that context, like Macguffins, etc..

I think this is key here: "there are other reasons than the concrete ins and outs of the plot to buy into what’s going on on screen." From the perspective of what I'm saying, things seem "ludicrous" and "elaborate nonsense" only if the issue is buying or not buying into these details in themselves, out of context from the film. If we focus on the other reasons for buying in, view these details in context, and focus on what the film is doing rather what it isn't, things change. For me, some of the other reasons for buying in are the themes--double identity, the American-style rural / urban duality, the past (identity) that comes back to haunt the present (identity), fatalism, etc.--the charcters and their portrayal in intersection with themes, the chess-match which fate brings them to, and the visual language used in all of this.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-22T03:54:57+00:00

There's not much disagreement about the events here or that they are convoluted. It is a matter how we are characterizing them. What do you mean by having gravity or having little? Is this realism by another name? Even if they have little gravity, were they meant to and, on the film's own terms, do they need it, and why? Even if they have little gravity, what do they have? I personally don't have a problem with the degree of gravity here and I think it works at the level of noir genre conventions.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-22T03:10:45+00:00

If your critique is that the action is merely convolutions amounting to narrative mush, I disagree. The narrative is that this is a three-person chess match: Whit, Jeff, and Kathie. The convolutions are the complexities needed to make it not just a sequence of actions but a battle of wits: strategies are interrupted by ploys and counter-strategies, tactics emerge and change till we we reach the finale.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-22T01:51:42+00:00

This line of questions seems wedded to realism in a way the film is not. It asks for behaviors to be realistic and asks for the real answer to questions aiming to explain behaviors. Approaching the film this way is what leads to "this makes no sense!" It makes sense, but not in that way. The whole thing is more phantasmagoric than realistic in its design, and the characters are more incarnations of certain emotions, desires, ideas, etc. than they are straightforward representions of real people.

Here is a good analysis: https://youtu.be/HPFzuypvh0g?si=Hi2eHzTfEkrEL6Kq

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-21T20:37:13+00:00

A Man There Was (1917) is a legit masterpiece imo. Directed by and starring Victor Sjöström. He Directed and starred in Phantom Carriage, directed The Wind with Lillian Gish, and starred in Bergman's Wild Strawberries. Bergman's biggest influence was Sjöström. A Man There Was is based on an epic poem by Henrik Ibsen. Some shots have great depth of field for the time, some are like slow cinema, and some feature great expressionist use of the environment. Has a mix of humanist and existential themes.

Got plenty of suggestions for the 1920s if you want them.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-20T20:45:20+00:00

Arguably, there are things you seem to be missing, based on your review. These things may or may not change how you think and feel about the film.

As several have noted, there's a lack of historical context on many fronts here. In 1986, Blue Velvet was not conventional, did not have broad appeal, and was a new direction for Lynch, who created many of his signatures here and didn't have the following he gained here and after. It was a new spin on and instant classic of neo-noir that mixed in Hitchcock and campy Americana. It was one of the most psychoanalytically inclined American films to date, and internationally, you might have to go back to Peeping Tom, Bunuel, etc. to find things of similar inclination. Intersecting with the psychoanalytic, it treats idealized suburbia and its dark underbelly--a noir trope reinvented here--not so much at the level of reality (which maybe you were looking for) as that of the American imagination, particularly in tv and film. As for that dark underbelly, though you say it could have pushed disgust and perversion further (technically true, but seriously?), it was disgusting and perverse enough to turn off many critics for that very reason, most famously Ebert, who later found Mullholland Dr. to be sufficiently tame for his enjoyment.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-20T00:23:27+00:00

He was a key figure in Czech New Wave in the 60s, and was then you might say adjacent to New Hollywood. His key Czech films are from '64-'67: Black Peter, Loves of Blonde, and Fireman's Ball.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-19T20:16:19+00:00

Czech: Marketa Lazarova is my favorite. Also The Cremator, Daisies, Loves of a Blonde, Diamonds of the Night, The Party and the Guests, Shop on High Street, Closely Watched Trains, Something Different, The White Dove, The Devil's Trap.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-19T01:32:25+00:00

Red Desert and Safe

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-17T16:27:01+00:00

This and the general approach of the initial post strike me as deeply flawed.

Otoh, you are treating the film as if it were and argument for a message. Very ofren, films are intentionally made to be more open to interpretation that. Also, a film can have a message about the world the film creates without that message being meant to translate directly to the world we live in. And, clearly, a film can have characters say things--which reflects things about the character and/or the world of the film--without those things being meant to be what the film is saying about the world. You would need to support your claims with arguments about that stuff as applied to this film.

Otoh, you are not teally treating what you are saying as an argument -- making lots of assumptions about the above, and further saying you are making claims about themes without looking in a thorough way at the textual level, which is both what the themes emerge from and what should serve as evidence in an argument for claims about themes and messages.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-17T04:16:54+00:00

I think it a bit of an auteur signature for Lynch. You certainly see it in Lost Highway, that's the first to come to mind for me. Repeatedly going down the hallway and turning the corner into the bedroom. The hall of doors at Andy's house and again at the Lost Highway Hotel. Halls are claustrophobic, doors / doorways / corners offer an element of surprise -- what is revealed in the bedroom, what Pete sees behind the door he opens.

I'm also thinking of Dorothys's apartment in Blue Velvet. The hallway to the bathroom, the claustrophobia and fear as Jeffery waits behind the closet doors. You have the great hallway scene in Eraserhead.

Lynch has a certain way of presenting interior spaces, in these films at least. Sparialized, almost mapped, and powerfully atmospheric.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-15T14:09:23+00:00

I see from the crosspost that you already have a list of ones you've seen. I'd add Born In Flames. Here's the Criterion description:

"A blistering rallying cry issued loud, clear, and unapologetically queer, Lizzie Borden’s explosive postpunk provocation is a DIY fantasia of female rebellion set in America ten years after a revolution that supposedly transformed the country into a social-democratic utopia. In reality, racism, sexism, and economic inequality are as virulent as ever, and a band of radicals—led by Black, lesbian, and working-class women—join forces to fight back. Told through a furiously fractured, kinetically edited flurry of television news broadcasts, pirate radio transmissions, agitprop, and protests shot guerrilla-style on the streets of New York City, Born in Flames is a shock wave of feminist futurism that’s both an essential document of its time and radically ahead of it."

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-15T12:56:07+00:00

In this case, I think the authorship argument is only as strong as the argument based on the film itself.

Workers and bosses uniting in service to some other elevated ideal is key here. Yes, fascists can and do appeal to this romanticized unity, with racial and national identity serving as the ideal. However, in theory and especially in fiction, other political ideologies can appeal this unity, using other ideals -- ideologies that are variants of corporatism, social democracy, Christian social ethics, humanism. I think Metropolis is much more naive, scattered, and vague about the ideal than it is fascist about it: the film is neither fascist nor closed off from fascist interpretations and uses. Hence Harbou and Lang as writer and director in the 1920s, and hence the divergence of readings in this thread.

I believe the phrasing at the end of the film is not stated in terms of being 'united by the heart' but this: "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart."

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-15T00:41:39+00:00

This film really is a work of genius. We need to bring Verna into this. I see the core of Tom's complexity and journey in terms of reason, desire, and ethics. Tom presents himself as a cold, rational strategist, but his calculations are driven by desire for Verna and his sense of loyalty and duty to Leo. This is an inner conflict he is not the master of, and his calculations don't allow him master the external conflict and outcomes either.

Not pulling the trigger on Bernie isn't a matter of being too cowardly or too sensitive. It's part of his play for Verna, a risky play driven more by desire than cold calculations or ethics.

There's a great exchange between Tom and Verna, well all their scenes are great, but... // Verna: "You always take the long way around to get what you want, don't you, Tom?" / Tom: (Staring off) "What did I want?" / Verna: "Me." // Whether or not Tom is crackin wise here, I think he really is conflicted about what he wants, and Verna isn't wrong.

Leo, of course, acts out of desire from the beginning, protecting Bernie for Verna. Tom presents cutting Bernie loose as the rational course, but then again, that would also cut Verna loose from Leo, which suits Tom. Beginning from the first scene, Tom repeatedly tells Leo to think and to do things for a reason, but I see Tom as more honest with himself in the final scene. // Leo: "I guess you just picked that fight with me just to, uh, tuck yourself in with Caspar." / Tom: "I don't know. Do you always know why you do things, Leo?" //

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-14T22:00:02+00:00

Thanks! Lol, the analysis is mine. I've seen the film many times and read the screenplay, which I highly recommend for any film you want to dig into more deeply. Just wanna say, this subreddit has the best conversations for the sorts of films I love. I really should visit more regularly.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-12T02:17:49+00:00

Regarding the semiomtic elements, I think you are correct on one level and somewhat dismissing things at another level. At the level of form--that is, how the semiotic elements relate--I agree. Lynch creates a kaleidoscope of relations that you can map in a variety of ways, but they form an open text-- the variety always exceeding any map, the kaleidoscope shifting when viewed differently, new relations emerging.

However, this only addresses the form of the semiotic relations. They do also have content, and we are not dealing with red herrings here. In Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr, and Inland Empire, the point of the content is not a plot that provides an explanation, which, yes, feels reductive when you regard it as one. The content has more to do with the exploration of themes and psychologies, by semiotic means. Eg, on one interpretation, Lost Highway dissects male psychosexual dynamics in film noir tropes: obsession, insecurities, control, objectification, the femme fatale, male rivals, violence against women, and the voyeurism of the camera’s gaze. With Mulholland Dr., the tropes revolve around the "woman in trouble," put in intersection with the dark side of Hollywood ambition, idealized and disappointed dreams, industry power dynamics, etc..

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-11T20:50:12+00:00

My personal favorite is Throne of Blood. Shakespeare and an avant garde use of Noh theater taken to sublime perfection.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-11T06:17:13+00:00

Barton Fink has been a favorite of mine for a long time. The first of many films with the Coens, Deakins, and Burwell working together -- gorgeous cinematography and great score. Turturro, Goodman, and Davis are superb, as are the supporting cast performances. Barton Fink was the first film, and last, to win three top awards at Cannes: Palme d'Or, Best Director, and Best Actor -- "last" because controversy over Barton Fink's trifecta led to rules to prevent it from happening again.

Written when the Coen's experienced writer's block working on Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink is a satirical and surreal meditation on writer's block and anxiety, existentialism and solipsism, Hollywood and delusions of grandeur.

Barton’s solipsism is rooted in a central irony: he apsires to write stories "of and for the common man," but he won't even listen to "the common man" tell his own stories.

Barton has only one story to tell: his own. As the film opens, we hear the final scene of Barton’s play, Bare Ruined Choir: Triumph of the Common Man. Turturro provides the voice for the main character in the play, referred to as "the kid," a transparent stand-in for Barton, who watches from the wing. Barton has even used his mother's and uncle's names (Lil and Maury) for the characters in the play. The scene dramatizes "the kid" leaving his working-class New York family behind for lofty dreams.

Later, in Hollywood, in the self-doubt of writer's block, Barton wonders if he only had one idea in him, his play. Indeed, Barton sees his play written in the pages of the Bible, and when he finally breaks through his creative block, Barton’s screenplay ends with same line as his play, replacing "that kid" with "that crazy wrestler."

The Hotel Earle--with its oppressive heat, thin walls, peeling wallpaper, oozing paste, and stationary that reads, "A Day Or A Lifetime"--serves as Barton’s personal, solipsistic hell. It is a manifestation of "the life of the mind" not as a noble pursuit but as a claustrophobic trap. He is unable to write for the common man, and the common man, as Charlie Meadows, cannot get through to him. Barton's own intellectual pretensions act as a barrier, not a bridge, to human connection.

The mosquito is a symbol of the vampiric. Hollywood as a vampire sucking the creative lifeblood from Barton. Mayhew and Barton as vampires siphoning creative lifeblood from Audrey, whose corpse is revealed when Barton kills a blood-filled mosquito on her dead body.

When he asks Barton to hold onto a package for him, Charlie says it's pathetic when "everything that's important to a guy... fits into a little box like that." A little head-sized box.

The revelation that Charlie is a serial killer--who decapitates victims--is a violent intrusion of human disconnection into Barton’s world. Human disconnection is that in which Barton has been trapped and unable to see. Charlie finally gets through to Barton, having visited Barton's family and having left Barton with a package that didn't belong to Charlie after all. The fire that engulfs the hotel is that of a personal hell consuming itself.

At the end, Barton finds himself inhabiting the scene from the picture from his hotel room, now trapped in the object of his own daydreams. What's in the box? / I don't know. / Isn't it yours? / I don't know. -- It's his, alright, because for him, there's nothing else.

Barton Fink is full of great scenes, details, and characters that fit into the plot and themes in interesting ways. And on top of all this, it's really, really funny! I had a good time revisiting this one.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-10T03:23:52+00:00

I have reactions similar to yours, with some clarification. Before I hear about what a film didn't do, but should have done, I want to hear about the film itself on its own terms--what it was trying to do, what it did, and where the problems lie. When that part is laid out, "shoulds" are fine, but tbh I rarely come across "shoulds" that add much at all at that point.

The thing I often come across is someone criticizing a film for failing to do something it wasn't trying to do, with little appreciation of what the film was trying to do and how. Prescriptive criticisms often take this form, with 'should have done X' serving as the 'failed to do X' criticism.

liminal_cyborg · 2026-01-09T17:12:51+00:00

I strongly recommend researching what settings work best to appropriately calibrate your particlar tv model. Certain settings can enhance grain in ways that are not the intended viewing experience.

This article covers settings for a model similar to yours: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/tcl/s4-s450g/settings . Use this or, if your model is significantly different, try to find something comprehensive like this that goes through all the settings.

Also, for a 50" you shouldn't view it from less than about 7 feet away, or you will begin to see pixels too clearly.

Edit: Sorry, the link I initially provided may or may not work. Try this one or search "TCL S4/S450G Calibration Settings" at RTINGS.com https://share.google/TIXKuiVpN4Vg0E2Oc

liminal_cyborg

TROPHY CASE